Registering Articles for a Journal without an ISSN

[mpalmquist]

We have a few older journals (and two newer ones) for which ISSNs are not available. I’d like to know the proper XML format for the journal metadata. I have been successful with this, but it updates the journal DOI.

<journal_metadata language=“en”>
<full_title>TITLE HERE</full_title>
<cfif len(#GetPubInfo.issn#) gt 0>ISSN HERE
<doi_data>
GET THE JOURNAL DOI
GET THE JOURNAL URL
</doi_data>
</journal_metadata>

The only issue I’m seeing is that the journal data is being updated on each submission. Can I avoid this with a different structure? Thanks.

[ifarley]

Hi @mpalmquist ,

Thanks for your message, and welcome to the Community Forum.

Yes, you may register DOIs for journals that do not or do not yet have an ISSN if you include a journal-title-level DOI in the XML submission, like this:

<journal_metadata language="en">
				<full_title>Journal of Metadata Perfection</full_title>
				<abbrev_title>JOMPer</abbrev_title>
				<doi_data>
					<doi>10.32013/487529</doi>
					<resource>https://www.crossref.org/jomper</resource>
				</doi_data>
			</journal_metadata>

You can see the full XML sample here: best-practice-examples/journal_article_4.8.0.xml · master · crossref / Schema · GitLab

Now, the journal-title-level DOI - in the above example 10.32013/487529 - needs to be entered consistently when registering DOIs for the Journal of Metadata Perfection, since that DOI is meant to be the unique and definitive DOI for the journal as a whole. If in my first submission of the Journal of Metadata Perfection, I enter and register the journal-title-level DOI as 10.32013/487529 and follow that with subsequent registrations that include a different journal-title-level DOI that will lead to inconsistent metadata records for the journal and likely many failure errors in your deposits.

So, in my example, I should use the DOI 10.32013/487529 consistently as the journal-title-level DOI for all articles registered within that journal.

My best,
Isaac

[mpalmquist]

Thanks. That was the code I was using, so it looks like I was on the right track. I wasn’t sure that I should be updating the journal title level DOI every time. (Apologies for the way my code appeared. It looked okay before I submitted the post.)

[ifarley]

@mpalmquist

I wasn’t sure that I should be updating the journal title level DOI every time

No, it should remain consistent for all registrations of that journal.

No worries about the code.

Happy I could help
-Isaac

[QaseemKashaf]

Can we assign and submit DOIs for a new journal, using the web deposit form, just like we did for our previous journal?

[QaseemKashaf]

I meant a new journal without ISSN yet!?

[collinks]

Hi @QaseemKashaf - welcome to the Community Forum!

If your journal is new and you haven’t yet been assigned an ISSN, you will need to register a journal-level DOI before you can register DOIs for the articles in the journal. A journal-level DOI functions in the same way that an ISSN does, to identify the journal as a whole.

In the Web Deposit Form, first enter your journal name, abbreviation, the journal homepage URL, and the journal DOI of your choosing. For this example, let’s say your journal DOI is 10.5555/abcd1234

Then, click Add Articles and enter the details for each article you wish to register a DOI for, following the usual process.

Whenever you submit future metadata deposits for this journal, you will always need to include the journal-level DOI 10.5555/abcd1234 in the Journal DOI+ field. This is our how system understands that article-level DOIs you register are linked to this journal.

Later, if you are assigned an ISSN, you should include both the ISSN and the journal-level DOI whenever you submit a metadata deposit. Let’s say my journal is assigned the electronic ISSN 0000-0000. Future Web Deposit Form submissions should look like this:

I hope this helps. Please let us know if you have any other questions!

Kindly,
Collin

[QaseemKashaf]

Thank you [collinks] and [Isaac], for your detailed answers and guidance, especially for being excellent teachers.

[jej03]

Hi Collin,

Let’s say I register a journal level DOI for the journal that does not yet have an ISSN, and since I’m not sure when the ISSN will be forthcoming, I proceed with registering DOIs for articles anyway. From reading the information on the “Updating your metadata” Crossref page, I understand I would need to contact Crossref and provide the ISSN so it can be added to the journal-level DOI.

What I’m not clear on is if I’d have to go back into each individual article I’ve already registered for that journal and update the ISSN for each article. And if I do need to do this, which method would you recommend?

Could you answer those questions for me? Thank you so much!

-Jessica Kelly

[collinks]

Hi @jej03, welcome to the Community Forum!

This is a great question. From the outset, I’ll say that it’s often better to just wait until an ISSN has been assigned to a journal before you begin registering DOIs for it. You can always go back and retroactively register DOIs for already-published articles once the ISSN has been assigned, and this will help you avoid needing to do the steps I’ll describe below to resubmit your metadata if you do register DOIs for articles in a journal without an ISSN and subsequently acquire an ISSN.

Also, this may be more or less difficult depending on which method you plan to use to register DOIs. For example, if you’re hosting your articles via OJS, you won’t be able to register any DOIs via the built-in OJS deposit tools before an ISSN is assigned. You can still register those DOIs via our Web Deposit Form and incorporate them into your OJS platform, but OJS isn’t able to submit the metadata for those DOIs to Crossref automatically until you’ve been assigned an ISSN. However, if you do proceed in this fashion (registering DOIs via the Web Deposit Form, incorporating them into OJS, then acquiring an ISSN), you will be able to immediately repush metadata deposits for all of your DOIs via the built-in OJS Crossref integration once you’ve added your ISSN into your OJS installation. This will update the metadata for all of your DOIs for this journal to reflect the newly acquired ISSN!

If you aren’t using OJS, the steps you’ll want to follow will be these:

First, you’ll want to start by registering any DOIs in your ISSN-less journal via the Web Deposit Form by choosing/assigning a journal-level DOI. This is shown in the first image in my 14 November 2024 post above. For the sake of example and simplicity, let’s continue to say your journal-level DOI is 10.5555/abcd1234. Make sure to include your exact journal-level DOI in every deposit you make by entering it on that first page of the Web Deposit Form. Note that the string of the journal-level DOI does not need to appear within the string of your article DOIs; that is, if 10.5555/abcd1234 is your journal-level DOI, your article DOIs do not need to take the form 10.5555/abcd1234/xyz456 but can instead be 10.5555/xyz456.

Down the line, whenever you’re assigned an ISSN or set of ISSNs, you will first need to go to the Web Deposit Form and enter your journal details: title, abbreviation, the journal-level DOI you have been using (10.5555/abcd1234) and the new ISSN(s). Do not enter volume/issue information or any dates. Instead, click Submit Journal/Issue DOI. This will add your ISSN to the top-level title record associated with your journal, but will not retroactively update the metadata for your existing DOIs to include the ISSNs. You will need to do one more step for that.

You could, in theory, just manually resubmit metadata for all of your DOIs via the Web Deposit Form in order to update their ISSNs. To do this, you would need to reenter all the previously submitted metadata for each DOI. Unfortunately, there is no manual way to do this in bulk as there is for e.g., resolution URLs. This sounds tedious and I would not wish it on anyone!

Instead, you can now move over to our new Metadata Manager which has the ability to retrieve submitted metadata for a DOI you have already registered. Log in and click Edit Record. Now, you should be able to enter an existing DOI, click Edit, click Next to arrive at the Journal screen and enter the ISSN(s). Click Next twice more then Submit and the DOI metadata will now be updated with the newly assigned ISSN(s). This process is still a bit manual but much, much less so than doing the same work via the Web Deposit Form.

I hope this is useful. If you have any other questions about this please let us know!